Birge, "Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan: Cases from the Yuan dianzhang"

New from Harvard University Press: Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan: Cases from the Yuan dianzhang, by Bettine Birge (University of Southern California). A description from the Press:

The Mongol conquest of China in the thirteenth century and Khubilai Khan’s founding of the Yuan dynasty brought together under one government people of different languages, religions, and social customs. Chinese law evolved rapidly to accommodate these changes, as reflected in the great compendium Yuan dianzhang (Statutes and Precedents of the Yuan Dynasty). The records of legal cases contained in this seminal text, Bettine Birge shows, paint a portrait of medieval Chinese family life—and the conflicts that arose from it—that is unmatched by any other historical source. 

Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan reveals the complex, sometimes contradictory inner workings of the Mongol-Yuan legal system, seen through the prism of marriage disputes in chapter eighteen of the Yuan dianzhang, which has never before been translated into another language. Birge’s meticulously annotated translation clarifies the meaning of terms and passages, some in a hybrid Sino-Mongolian language, for specialists and general readers alike. The text includes court testimony—recorded in the vivid vernacular of people from all social classes—in lawsuits over adultery, divorce, rape, wife-selling, marriages of runaway slaves, and other conflicts. It brings us closer than any other source to the actual Mongolian speech of Khubilai and the great khans who succeeded him as they struggled to reconcile very different Mongol, Muslim, and Chinese legal traditions and confront the challenges of ruling a diverse polyethnic empire.

A few blurbs:

“Birge has been working on Song and Yuan marriage law for more than two decades and is better qualified than anyone else to do the translation. This is a pleasure to read; she writes lucidly and gracefully. The subjects—law in China, marriage law, the Yuan period—are all ones that will draw readers to the work. Birge’s translation will be used not only by historians of China, but also by scholars and students interested in comparative law, social life and marriage, plus the Yuan dynasty and the Mongols more generally.”—Patricia Buckley Ebrey 

“Based on painstaking research on legal decisions concerning marriage during the Yuan dynasty, this work illuminates the contradictions and difficulties the Mongols faced in attempting to develop a consistent approach to marital law. Birge’s descriptions of the Mongol government and the lawmaking process are informative, and her translations accurate and readable. The book offers many revealing insights, including that women instituted many of the legal cases, an indication that they were not as secluded or powerless as commonly thought.”—Morris Rossabi

More information is available herehttp://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975514.

Pearlston on Canadian Judicial Interpretations of Lesbian Sex under the Divorce Act

Karen Pearlston, Faculty of Law, University of New Brunswick, has published "Avoiding the Vulva: Judicial Interpretations of Lesbian Sex Under the Divorce Act, 1968," which appears in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society 32 (2017): 37-53.  It's gated, but here is the abstract.

The Divorce Act, 1968, provided no-fault divorce for the first time. It also included a list of fault-based grounds for divorce. In addition to the traditional grounds, a spouse whose wife or husband had “engaged in a homosexual act” during the marriage could petition for divorce. This novel provision was aimed at giving husbands a way to divorce their lesbian wives. A close reading of the resulting jurisprudence and surrounding context shows not only that courts struggled to define the homosexual act between women, but also that the legal history of lesbian women differs from that of gay men in a number of respects. Notably, male homosexuality was regulated primarily through criminal law. In contrast, when parliamentarians specifically addressed lesbians, they turned their minds to the family and family law.

CFP: Regulating Age of Consent and Child-Marriage in the British Empire

Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV & Rana Prathap Kumari (wiki)

[We have the following call for papers.] 

Comparative perspectives on regulating age of consent and child-marriage in the British Empire, 1880 to 1930.  June 15, 2018.  SOAS University of London.

This is a call for proposals for a one-day interdisciplinary conference which aims to explore the debates that led to the reform of age of consent laws around the British Empire during the years 1880 to 1930. The conference is particularly interested in exploring the issues of age of consent and child marriage through interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives in law and history.

Intertwined within these debates are notions of gender, women's rights, biology, and attempts to understand the native psyche. These compete with tropes of cultural relativism, orientalism, the female victim, and the white man's burden amongst other concerns. For the purpose of this conference, consent is interpreted widely to include physical and intellectual consent to sexual activities as well as marriage.  The conference aims to bring together the growing number of scholars who are currently working on the histories of age of consent in the British Empire.

Recognising that the development and history of the age of consent debate is transnational, international, and multi-layered one, the conference is conceived of as a starting point for forming an international network of scholars working in the area.

Themes of the conference include but are not limited to notions of consent-physical and/or intellectual; age of consent campaigns and national movements; religion/class/region based perspectives on consent; comparative or regional studies on age of consent/marriage; age of consent for males; consent, female body, and nationalism/imperialism.

Please send 300-word abstract with a short bio to ageofconsentsoas@gmail.com. The deadline is 08 January 2018.  Bursaries might be available for PG students.  Organisers: Dr Kanika Sharma (SOAS) and Dr Laura Lammasniemi (Anglia Ruskin University).

Zhang, "The Laws and Economics of Confucianism"

Out today from Cambridge University Press: The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Preindustrial China and England, by Taisu Zhang (Yale Law School). The book is part of the series Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society. A description from the Press:

Tying together cultural history, legal history, and institutional economics, The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Pre-Industrial China and England offers a novel argument as to why Chinese and English pre-industrial economic development went down different paths. The dominance of Neo-Confucian social hierarchies in Late Imperial and Republican China, under which advanced age and generational seniority were the primary determinants of sociopolitical status, allowed many poor but senior individuals to possess status and political authority highly disproportionate to their wealth. In comparison, landed wealth was a fairly strict prerequisite for high status and authority in the far more 'individualist' society of early modern England, essentially excluding low-income individuals from secular positions of prestige and leadership. Zhang argues that this social difference had major consequences for property institutions and agricultural production.

A few blurbs:

"In this lucid and thought-provoking study, Taisu Zhang creatively and empirically reinterprets the causal relationships among cultural norms, property institutions, and socioeconomic behavior in early modern China and England. This holds profound implications for the study of global economic history, Sino-Western comparison, and Chinese law and society. This important book will not fail to stimulate new inquiries and debates for many years to come."-- Li Chen 

"Marrying cutting-edge historical archival work with remarkable cross-disciplinary theoretical breadth, Taisu Zhang boldly and brilliantly raises vitally important questions about the interplay of culture, law, and economic institutions in pre-industrial China and England. Anyone interested in global economic history or in today’s China will want to engage this powerful but inviting book." -- William P. Alford

More information, including the TOC, is available here.

We are also excited to report that Taisu Zhang will be joining us as a guest blogger for the month of December. We look forward to hearing more about this project!

AJLH 57:3

The American Journal of Legal History 57: 3 (September 2017) is now available in its entirety.

Articles

From Petitions for Gratuities to Claims for Damages: Personal Injuries and Railroads During the Industrialization of the United States, by Robert J. Kaczorowski

Acts of the “Most Sanguinary Rage”: Spousal Murder in Montreal, 1825-1850, by Ian C. Pilarczyk

‘His Barbarous Usages’, Her ‘Evil Tongue’: Character and Class in Trials for Spouse Murder at the Old Bailey, 1674-1790, by Andrea McKenzie

Book Reviews
 
Richard Alan Ryerson, John Adams' Republic: The One, the Few, and the Many
Luke Mayville, John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy   
Tom Cutterham

Dale Gibson, Law, Life and Government at Red River, Volume 1, Settlement and Governance, 1812-1872   
Russell C. Smandych

Laura Weinrib, The Taming of Free Speech: America’s Civil Liberties Compromise   
Anders Walker

Peter Wallenstein, Race, Sex, and the Freedom to Marry: Loving v. Virginia   
Alison Lefkovitz

Mothers and the Constitution: An ICH Seminar

[We are moving this up because the deadline has been extended to September 15, 2017.]

The Institute for Constitutional History is pleased to announce another seminar for advanced graduate students and junior faculty, “Mothers and the Constitution”:

The seminar will explore the relationship between the changing practice of motherhood and the law.  Using Supreme Court cases, important state cases, and supplementary historical and statutory materials we will study the many ways that constitutional interpretation and government policy have regulated the lives of different kinds of mothers and occasionally of fathers too. We will organize our discussions around four key issues: Custody and Care, Reproduction, Work, and State Support, focusing on the twentieth century; and taking into account the influence of such factors as race, religion, migration, and sexuality on developing constitutional interpretation. 

Instructors. Alice Kessler-Harris is R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History, Emerita, at Columbia University where she was also Professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and held a faculty affiliate appointment in the Columbia University School of Law. Carol Sanger is the Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law at Columbia Law School where she teaches Contracts, Family Law, and research seminars on “Meanings of Motherhood: Legal and Historical Perspectives” (with Alice Kessler-Harris) and “Abortion: Law in Context.”

Logistics.  The dates the seminar will meet are:  October 6, October 13, November 3, and November 10; Fridays from 2-5 p.m.  The seminar will be held at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York City.  There is no tuition or other charge for this seminar, though participants will be expected to acquire the assigned books on their own.

Application Process.  The seminar is designed for graduate students and junior faculty in history, political science, law, and related disciplines.  All participants will be expected to complete the assigned readings and participate in seminar discussions.  Although the Institute cannot offer academic credit directly for the seminar, students may be able to earn graduate credit through their home departments by completing an independent research project in conjunction with the seminar.  Please consult with your advisor and/or director of graduate studies about these possibilities.  Space is limited, so applicants should send a copy of their c.v. and a short statement on how this seminar will be useful to them in their research, teaching, or professional development.  Materials will be accepted only by email at MMarcus@nyhistory.org until May 15, 2017.  Successful applicants will be notified soon thereafter.  For further information, please contact Maeva Marcus at (202) 994-6562 or send an email to MMarcus@nyhistory.org.

About ICH.  The Institute for Constitutional History (ICH) is the nation’s premier institute dedicated to ensuring that future generations of Americans understand the substance and historical development of the U.S. Constitution. Located at the New York Historical Society and the George Washington University Law School, the Institute is co-sponsored by the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Political Science Association.  The Association of American Law Schools is a cooperating entity.  ICH prepares junior scholars and college instructors to convey to their readers and students the important role the Constitution has played in shaping American society.  ICH also provides a national forum for the preparation and dissemination of humanistic, interdisciplinary scholarship on American constitutional history.

JOTWELL roundup: on Pfander, Fortner, Hinton, Chused & Williams

As regular readers know, JOTWELL's Legal History section is a great source for identifying must-read work in our field. Lately I've noticed lots of other JOTWELL sections also calling attention to historical work. Here's a roundup:

Writing for the Courts Law section, Steve Vladeck has posted an admiring review of James Pfander's Constitutional Torts and the War on Terror (2017).

Writing for the Criminal Law section, Margareth Etienne directs readers to Michael Javen Fortner, Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment (2015).

A "Poverty Law" contribution, by Wendy Bach, flags Elizabeth Hinton's much-admired From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (2016).

And Janet Halley's review for the Family Law section takes up Richard Chused and Wendy Williams, Gendered Law in American History (2016).

Weekend Roundup

• Have you registered for ASLH 2017?  We have.

• From the Washington Post's "Made by History" section: Noah Shusterman (Chinese University of Hong Kong), "Bastille Day reminds us that our Second Amendment debates are distorted"; Leif Frederickson, "Scott Pruitt is wrong about the origins of the EPA"; Gregory Downs (UC Davis), "Why the second American Revolution deserves as much attention as the first"; and more.

• From the Legal History Miscellany: two summer posts on coroners' inquests in English history--this by Cassie Watson on suicide and medico-legal experts and this by Krista Kesselring on deaths in custody.

• Jed Shugerman, Fordham Law School, has posted his “historical tables/lists on major elected officials with prosecutorial backgrounds, 1880-2017,” which are part of his book project, “The Rise of the Prosecutor Politicians.”  What the Prison Policy Center made of them, for the recent American politics of “law and order” is here.

• ICYMI: Mae Ngai, Columbia University, in the New York Times, on The Dark History of Defining “Family”

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers. 

McKenzie on Spousal Murder at the Old Bailey

We received an advance alert on the publication of  "His Barbarous Usages", Her "Evil Tongue": Character and Class in Trials for Spouse Murder at the Old Bailey, 1674-1790, by Andrea McKenzie, Department of History, University of Victoria, in the American Journal of Legal History:

This article analyses and compares the defences, verdicts and punishments of both men and women tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of their spouses or common-law partners from 1674 to 1790, a period that witnessed the gradual if ultimately momentous ‘lawyerisation’ of criminal trial. The vast majority of these cases continued, however, to resemble ‘sentencing hearings’, focusing less on an adversarial contest over guilt or innocence than on mitigating circumstances and the character of defendants, witnesses and victims. While an emerging eighteenth-century culture of sensibility contributed to a decriminalisation of female passion and sexuality, these trials also testify to the continuity and vitality of a discretionary regime and more resilient assumptions about gender and class. In marked contrast with the handful of sensational murder trials that generated media attention and outrage and tended to end in execution, a large proportion of these more pedestrian and representative cases of domestic homicide—particularly women accused of murdering husbands after 1740—ended in acquittal or manslaughter verdicts, especially in cases where provocation could be established. This study suggests that this relative lenience speaks less to the compassion accorded to defendants than a lack of sympathetic identification with their largely working-class victims, especially those of perceived bad character.

Elson on "A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America"

New from Temple University Press: Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America (June 2017), by Jean Elson (University of New Hampshire). A description from the Press:

The bitter and public court battle waged between Nina and James Walker of Newport, Rhode Island, from 1909 to 1916 created a sensation throughout the nation, with lurid accounts of their marital troubles fueling widespread gossip. The ordeal of this high-society couple, who wed as much for status as for love, is one of the prime examples of the growing trend of women seeking divorce during the early twentieth century.

Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness—which takes its title from the charges Nina levied against James for his adultery (with the family governess) and extreme cruelty—recounts the protracted legal proceedings in juicy detail.

More information is available here.

Weekend Roundup

• From Notches: "A Portrait of Jane Crow." Rosalind Rosenberg (Barnard College) discusses her recently published book on Pauli Murray.

• The Washington Post will launch a new podcast "about the history of the U.S. Constitution and the great debates that have shaped it over time."

• And much more from the Washington Post: Earlier this week we mentioned the new "Made by History" section. Recent contributions include Sarah Milov (University of Virginia) on learning from the tobacco playbook and Bruce Schulman (Boston University) on the relationship between federalism and liberal policymaking.

• Over at the National Constitution Center's blog, Serena Mayeri (Penn Law) "explains what Loving v. Virginia did and did not do for marriage and racial equality in the United States."

• From Legal Planet: Dan Farber (UC Berkeley) on "environmental originalism." (h/t Environment, Law, and History) 

•  From the blog of the Maastricht European Private Law Institute: Agustín Parise on Comparative Legal History: It is Time to Speak of an Autonomous Discipline?

• Judge Jon O. Newman will deliver the 13th Annual Robert H. Jackson Lecture on the Supreme Court of the United States in the Hall of Philosophy at the Chautauqua Institution at 4PM on Wednesday, August 16, 2017.

• The Italian Society of Law and Economics welcomes submissions of papers on any topic regarding the Economic Analysis of Law [including the “History of Law and Economics Thought”] for its 13th annual conference to be held in Rome at LUMSA University on December 15-16, 2017.

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

CFP: Mixed Familial Relations Viewed Globally and Comparatively

[We have the following call for papers for a special issue in The History of the Family: An International Quarterly, devoted to Mixed Marriage, Interracial Relationships and Binational Couples from Global and Comparative Perspectives and guest edited by Julia Moses, University of Sheffield/University of Göttingen and Julia Woesthoff, DePaul University.]

In response to the mass globalization of the twenty-first century and associated migration, a recent boom in social-scientific research has analyzed various manifestations of binational and interracial romantic relationships in the present and recent past. This theme issue seeks to historicize this research by drawing on key case studies from across the world and across time and drawing on relevant historiography and theoretical literature. This call for proposals welcomes both quantitative and qualitative studies that shed light on individual experiences of, as well as various practices of regulating, ‘interracial’, ‘binational’ and ‘mixed marriages’. The issue aims to parse the assumptions behind these contested concepts and to trace how these categories have shifted over time and space. In doing so, it also seeks to chart how intermarriages and other forms of interracial, binational and cross-confessional relationships took shape: who participated in these relationships? How common were they, and in which circumstances were they practiced (or banned)? Contributions investigating relationships involving regions in the Americas, Africa and Asia are particularly welcome.

Abrams and Barber on Gender Equality, Emerging Adulthood and Domicile

Kerry Abrams, University of Virginia School of Law, and Kathryn Barber,  a 2015 graduate of UVA Law, have posted Domicile Dismantled, which appears in the Indiana Law Journal 92 (2017): 387-433:

Domicile is more durable than residence: it is defined as a person’s “true, fixed, and permanent home and principal establishment, and to which he has the intention of returning whenever he is absent therefrom.” This Article argues that, in the last fifty years, the legal fiction of domicile has become increasingly unmoored from the reality of people’s lives. This shift resulted from two historical changes. The first is the rise of gender equality. As women entered the workforce in increasing numbers and gained access to higher education, their mobility and autonomy increased. Simultaneously, they began to delay marriage, or to forego marriage altogether, and those who were married were less likely to reflexively adopt their husband’s domicile and were more inclined to make domiciliary choices for themselves and their families. The second is the increasingly long time it takes young adults to become financially and emotionally self-sufficient and independent from their parents. This so-called phenomenon of “emerging adulthood,” identified by psychologists as a new phase of life that sometimes lasts into a person’s thirties, has made it more difficult for young adults to establish a new domicile. Courts have thus increasingly relied upon a person’s domicile of origin in making these determinations, even where there is little chance that the party will ever return there. This Article uses the landmark 1971 case of Mas v. Perry to illustrate the dismantling of domicile. It traces the history of changing gender roles and adult development since Mas and argues that because of these two trends, the concept of domicile is no longer capable of doing the legal work it is supposed to do. Residence, rather than domicile, is a more sensible and accurate way to handle jurisdictional questions.

Frank on "How Gays and Lesbians Brought Marriage Equality to America"

New from Harvard University Press: Awakening: How Gays and Lesbians Brought Marriage Equality to America, by Nathaniel Frank (Columbia Law School). A description from the Press:

The right of same-sex couples to marry provoked decades of intense conflict before it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015. Yet some of the most divisive contests shaping the quest for marriage equality occurred not on the culture-war front lines but within the ranks of LGBTQ advocates. Nathaniel Frank tells the dramatic story of how an idea that once seemed unfathomable—and for many gays and lesbians undesirable—became a legal and moral right in just half a century.

Awakening begins in the 1950s, when millions of gays and lesbians were afraid to come out, let alone fight for equality. Across the social upheavals of the next two decades, a gay rights movement emerged with the rising awareness of the equal dignity of same-sex love. A cadre of LGBTQ lawyers soon began to focus on legal recognition for same-sex couples, if not yet on marriage itself. It was only after being pushed by a small set of committed lawyers and grassroots activists that established movement groups created a successful strategy to win marriage in the courts.

Marriage equality proponents then had to win over members of their own LGBTQ community who declined to make marriage a priority, while seeking to rein in others who charged ahead heedless of their carefully laid plans. All the while, they had to fight against virulent antigay opponents and capture the American center by spreading the simple message that love is love, ultimately propelling the LGBTQ community—and America—immeasurably closer to justice.

More information is available here.

Hunter, "Bound in Wedlock"

New from Harvard University Press: Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century (May 2017), by Tera W. Hunter (Princeton University). A description from the Press:

Americans have long viewed marriage between a white man and a white woman as a sacred union. But marriages between African Americans have seldom been treated with the same reverence. This discriminatory legacy traces back to centuries of slavery, when the overwhelming majority of black married couples were bound in servitude as well as wedlock. Though their unions were not legally recognized, slaves commonly married, fully aware that their marital bonds would be sustained or nullified according to the whims of white masters.

Bound in Wedlock is the first comprehensive history of African American marriage in the nineteenth century. Uncovering the experiences of African American spouses in plantation records, legal and court documents, and pension files, Tera W. Hunter reveals the myriad ways couples adopted, adapted, revised, and rejected white Christian ideas of marriage. Setting their own standards for conjugal relationships, enslaved husbands and wives were creative and, of necessity, practical in starting and supporting families under conditions of uncertainty and cruelty.

After emancipation, white racism continued to menace black marriages. Laws passed during Reconstruction, ostensibly to secure the civil rights of newly freed African American citizens, were often coercive and repressive. Informal antebellum traditions of marriage were criminalized, and the new legal regime became a convenient tool for plantation owners to discipline agricultural workers. Recognition of the right of African Americans to enter into wedlock on terms equal to whites would remain a struggle into the Jim Crow era, and its legacy would resonate well into the twentieth century.

A few blurbs:

“Tera Hunter’s fascinating and intensive assessment of slave and free marriages in the nineteenth century details powerfully both the supreme importance of kinship relations and the complex ways that the persistence of post–Civil War white supremacy vexed and hampered African American family integrity even more directly than legacies of slavery did.”—Nancy F. Cott

“Bound in Wedlock demonstrates that the history of African American marriage is far more than a legacy of slavery. Instead, it is a story at once rooted in a distinctive collective experience, intensely personal, and at the same time bound up in the legal, social, and cultural transformations that re-made marriage for all Americans. Wide-ranging, learned, and deeply researched, it is a splendid accomplishment.”—Dylan C. Penningroth

More information is available here.

Cong on Marriage & Gender in Revolutionary China

Xiaoping Cong, University of Houston, has published Marriage, Law and Gender in Revolutionary China, 1940-1960 with Cambridge University Press (2016). From the publisher:

Xiaoping Cong examines the social and cultural significance of Chinese revolutionary legal practice in the construction of marriage and gender relations. Her book is an empirically rich investigation of the ways in which a 1943 legal dispute over an arranged marriage in a Chinese village became a legal, political and cultural exemplar on the national stage. This conceptually groundbreaking study revisits the Chinese Revolution and its impact on women and society by presenting a Chinese experience that cannot and should not be theorized in the framework of Western discourse. Taking a cultural historical perspective, Cong shows how the Chinese Revolution and its legal practices produced new discourses, neologisms and cultural symbols that contained China's experience in twentieth-century social movements, and how revolutionary practice was sublimated into the concept of 'self-determination', an idea that bridged local experiences with the tendency of the twentieth-century world, and that is a revolutionary legacy for China today.

Table of Contents after the jump.

CFP: Family, Human Rights and Internationalism

[We have the following call for papers.]

The Family, Human Rights and Internationalism: Global Historical-Sociological Perspectives, 10-11 November 2017, University of Göttingen

Historical and historical-sociological research on the history of human rights discourse and law has abounded in recent years. However, it has neglected one of the key issues that informed early thinking about human rights: the family as a protected category. This conference addresses this issue by approaching it from the perspective of global historical sociology. In this way, the conference also sheds important light on the historical diffusion of cultural and legal norms on the family and sexuality. It reflects on various religious and other imaginaries of the family and considers how they emerged and spread across the globe. How have human rights law and discourse intersected with the family and sexuality? How has this connection taken shape in different historical contexts? And, how has it evolved since the nineteenth century?

The conference brings together historians and historical sociologists interested in the global development of norms and practices related to the family through international law, international institutions, migration and empires. Papers are invited that focus on these issues from a historical perspective for the nineteenth and twentieth century. They can consider various mechanisms through which norms on the family intersected with ideas about human rights, for example, through empires and their collapse; intellectuals; war; and, migration, amongst others. Papers on regions around the globe are welcome, as are contributions on relevant international bodies and individuals who have been influential in this regard.

Keynote lectures will be provided by Professor Samuel Moyn (Harvard) and Professor Sally Engle Merry (NYU).  The conference will take place at the University of Göttingen, and reasonable travel costs and accommodation will be provided for accepted presenters.

Organisers: Dr Julia Moses, Dept. of History, Univ. of Sheffield / Institute of Sociology, Univ. of Göttingen; Prof Matthias Koenig, Institute of Sociology, University of Göttingen

To apply to participate, please send a short abstract (ca. 150-300 words) to Dr Julia Moses (j.moses@sheffield.ac.uk) by 31 March 2017.

Thompson, "In Defence of the ‘Gold-Digger’"

Sharon Thompson (Cardiff University) has posted "In Defence of the 'Gold-Digger.'" It appears in Volume 6 of the Oñati Socio-Legal Series (2016). Here's the abstract:

This article examines the gold-digging trope in family law. It explores the etymology of the term and how it has been employed in cultural and legal contexts, such as media, parliamentary debates and case law. It is argued that the gold-digger construct has shifted, in that it was once applied only to women who formed relationships with men for financial gain, but is now used against all women in the context of modern equality claims in family law, regardless of their intentions. Today, the gold-digger is any woman who seeks a fair share of family assets on divorce, and the concept informs ideas not only of claims to financial relief on divorce, but also the enforceability of prenuptial agreements.

The full article is available here, at SSRN.

McDougall's "Royal Bastards"

Sara McDougall, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, has published Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230, in the Oxford University Press's series, Studies in Medieval European History:

The stigmatization as ‘bastards’ of children born outside of wedlock is commonly thought to have emerged early in Medieval European history. Christian ideas about legitimate marriage, it is assumed, set the standard for legitimate birth. Children born to anything other than marriage had fewer rights or opportunities. They certainly could not become king or queen. As this volume demonstrates, however, well into the late twelfth century, ideas of what made a child a legitimate heir had little to do with the validity of his or her parents’ union according to the dictates of Christian marriage law. Instead a child’s prospects depended upon the social status, and above all the lineage, of both parents. To inherit a royal or noble title, being born to the right father mattered immensely, but also being born to the right kind of mother. Such parents could provide the most promising futures for their children, even if doubt was cast on the validity of the parents’ marriage. Only in the late twelfth century did children born to illegal marriages begin to suffer the same disadvantages as the children born to parents of mixed social status. Even once this change took place we cannot point to ‘the Church’ as instigator. Instead, exclusion of illegitimate children from inheritance and succession was the work of individual litigants who made strategic use of Christian marriage law. This new history of illegitimacy rethinks many long-held notions of medieval social, political, and legal history.

TOC after the jump

Gault at 50

My colleague Wally Mlyniec notes in an email to the Georgetown University Law Center's faculty, in part in reference to the Georgetown clinic he led for many year:

Today marks a significant day in American jurisprudence and an especially significant day for the Juvenile Justice Clinic. . . .  Norman Dorsen argued the case of In re Gault before the Supreme Court. The case was first noticed by the late Amelia Lewis, a sole practitioner in the state of Arizona. Mrs. Lewis took the case after the family of the boy, Gerald Gault, had virtually exhausted its appeals. The American Civil Liberties Union and its Arizona affiliate underwrote the effort, but Mrs. Lewis paid her way to Washington and her expenses while here. She later said she had been drawn to the case because "I have raised three healthy sons, and I wanted to give something back." The Court’s decision required that lawyers be appointed for all children prosecuted in the juvenile delinquency courts throughout the nation. The Court’s decision also made the due process rights of notice, confrontation, and cross examination, and the privilege against self-incrimination part of the delinquency court process. It also became the basis for all we do in Georgetown’s Juvenile Justice Clinic -- the longest continuously operating juvenile justice clinic in American academia.

The national community of juvenile justice lawyers are commemorating this year as Gault at 50. It will culminate May when we celebrate the rendering of the Court’s decision.